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In the discussion about mods and sandbox games, Garry’s Mod stands as one of my favorite PC sandbox tools of all time, and a standard bearer for how a mod can become a force all its own in the gaming world. It proved a valuable asset for creating our old Leet World show, and was the primary reason that we felt we could make the series to begin with.

I’m thinking of all of this because Kotaku posted an interview with Garry Newman, the creator of Garry’s Mod, and it’s quite the read. It’s got some really fascinating thoughts, not only about the success of the mod itself (Garry has made quite a bit of money, considering it’s sold over 770,000 units and he gets a cut of each sale), but also about the nature of modding and where it’s going in the future. A brief snippet:

“What’s the difference between someone modding an engine and someone licensing an engine? There’s no difference at all, it’s just what you call it. A mod isn’t just a mod anymore, it’s a game.”

He even talks a little about his interview with Valve. Seriously, this piece is totally worth the read if you’re at all interested in the subject, especially considering where PC modding have come in the last year with its rousing success stories.

So, how many of you guys have played Garry’s Mod? What are some of your other favorites and where do you see PC modding going in the future?

I don’t know how many of you played Empire at War, the most recent of the Star Wars brands’ long line of mediocre Real Time Strategy titles, but I sank a fair few hours into that game. It wasn’t bad by any stretch, but it was nothing worth writing home about, either. While the ground combat was severely lacking (you couldn’t build base structures where you wanted them), the space battles were great fun. Taking control of either the Rebellion, the Empire or Tyber Zann’s Consortium, you could duke it out with anything from X-Wings to Super Star Destroyers. As fun as it was, it was fairly limited in scope, and the Galactic Conquest mode made the space battles more of a stepping stone than a main attraction. I’ve longed for the day that I can control the Empire on a mission to take over the galaxy, and it may have finally arrived with this fan made mod for Sins of a Solar Empire.

Sins is a game that focuses on managing a huge empire, so the large scale of its maps (which can range from one solar system to several) is a perfect fit for the Star Wars aesthetics. The mod is fairly easy to install, too, since all of Gas Powered Games’ titles are DRM free and open to modding. As soon as you boot the program up, you’re instantly treated to Duel of the Fates, the song that plays when Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Gin are dueling Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace. The whole mod is fantastic, and all of the Star Wars ships look exactly like you would imagine them to. Even ships that are only present in the expanded universe, such as Lancer assault frigates, are represented in game. The models for the ships are really well detailed, and the sound effects are very true to the movies; they even replaced the phase jump sound effect with the noise of a ship jumping to hyperspace. The mod does rip quite a few sound files from Empire at War, so they loose a few points for that. Over all, this is a really high quality mod, and it got me excited enough to install Sins on my machine again. If you’ve got the game and are inclined towards Star Wars, pick up this mod. Heck, even if you’re just interested in high quality homebrew expansions, grab it as well. Hit the jump for a video of a space battle in progress: Continue reading Mitch’s Mods: Star Wars Requiem For Sins of a Solar Empire